When comparing power levels and
women’s rights, Sparta was a leader in its time. Athens and Sparta, though both
Greek city-states were different in the way they operated. More specifically,
Sparta was different in the way that they treated their women. Athenian woman
were treated quite appallingly compare to the standards of today’s women. The
stem of this difference seems to lie in how these two city-states were
governed. Sparta, known for its’ militaristic ways, was an oligarchy and
Athens, known for its’ philosophers and thinkers, was a democracy. Sparta’s
oligarchy was ruled by a counsel of 5 men, on being a lawmaker or giver. The
lawgiver’s name was Lycurgus. Lycurgus was known for his warden-like ways in
the training of men for war, but also for his equivalence in the rights of
Spartan women. It has been speculated that women’s equality to men sprung from
stories “of the Amazons [, warrior women of the Bronze Age, position and
bravery] in the Trojan War” (Who were the Amazons?). Athens, on the other hand,
was a democracy that acted with the voice of the people through the Senate and
the Roman Council. It was not surprising then that women were so highly kept
and protected. It has been said the belief of the Athenian man was that “women
were…highly sexual beings who could not control their sexual urges and therefore
had to be restricted for their own benefit.” (Graham) It should come as no
surprise how they were treated, then. One of the great literary men of Athens,
Euripides, has proclaimed in his book, Meda, “If only children could be
gotten some other way with the female sex! If women didn’t exist, human life
would b e free of all its miseries.” (Graham) Unfortunately, Euripides shared
the mindset of the Athenian man. Where politics, in the way, of having a vote
seemed off limits to any Greek woman and childbearing was their number one
purpose, the women of these two city-states had some very blatant differences.
The paragraphs below will illuminate some of these.

When getting down to the
specific differences, one must consider all aspects of a woman’s daily life. It
must be considered how they were taught, what their responsibilities were in the
Greek home and what rights if any were held.

By far, the worst case
scenario was that of the Athenian woman. By the 5th century BC,
Athenian women were barely considered to be better than slaves. They were
generally not taught to read or write and were not expected to be educated.
Women prior to the 7th century BC were thought to “have been subject
to similar rites of passage as boys” (The Women of Athens). An Athenian woman
was not allowed out of the home. After the 7th century BC and
Pericle’s Law on the legitimacy of marriage, women’s rights took a large decline
from their already horrible state. They were expected to command the running of
the house by the slaves and bear lots of children. The number of slaves a family
had determined what work a woman was allowed to do. There were three classes of
woman: slave women (carried out domestic chores and were nannies to the woman
of the houses’ children), Athenian citizen women, and Hetaerae (considered
prostitutes though were allowed education and to visit the Agora or
marketplace). The only women that had any rights in Athens were the Concubines
or hetaerae whom were considered the prostitutes. They could move freely
through society; however it was noted that they were highly exploited. They
could develop relationships with their male companions and have children, but
their children were illegitimate and, therefore, not citizens of Athens.It was stated, though, that “citizen wives and
daughters were protected, but the prostitutes or pornoi were open to all forms
of sexual exploitation… [and] were maintained by men, or worked in brothels and
on the streets.” (Graham) The most important purpose of Athenian women was to be
used as bargaining chips in arranged marriages which the father of the bride was
in charge of. This was because of the large dowry that was given to the groom
but kept by the father’s brother. Fathers would marry off their young teenage
daughter to men in their 30s. They were not allowed to meet their new groom
until a contract had been agreed upon. Even then, the bride would not become a
full member of her new family until the first healthy child was born. If the
child survived mortality, the husband would decide if the baby would be kept.
“If he accepted it, it would live, but if he refused it, it would die” (Graham)
by placing the child in a clay pot outside the home or by the roadside. The
wife’s child would be denied if it were “unhealthy or deformed or even of the
wrong sex” (Graham). Female children were often considered inferior to male
children. The father’s brother was responsible for finding the bride a new
husband if she was widowed. If he was dead, then “the woman became a virtual
slave” (The Women of Athens) because she could own not property and would have
no where to reside. Women could not divorce their husbands without providing an
archon or public official with good reason to do so. Husbands, however, could
divorce a wife and send her home at any time. They could, also, stop a woman
from finding a public official by confining her to the home. Even Athenian
fathers could easily end a marriage up until the first child was born. If the
woman was successfully divorced, she “would loose all rights to her children”
(Graham). An Athenian woman was not to be seen in public, had no rights to vote
or take part in state operation. They could not watch or participate in the
Olympic Games because the games were preformed in the nude. Women were expected
to manage the house and slaves, make all the clothing and coordinate weddings,
funerals (no crying was allowed of these women, their only function was to
prepare the body, carry the libations during the funeral, make sure that food
was delivered “to the gravesite on the 3rd and 9th day”
(Graham)), and a hundred and twenty state religious festivals honoring the
Gods. It would seem “the men were a lot more taken with the goddesses” than
their own women. (Graham) However, men in Athens depended “on the females as
nurturer of life” (Cole). Male and female roles were both represented by the
female goddesses Athena (male) and Demeter (female). This did not change the
fact that female children were less desirable that male children. The birth of
daughters stripped the oikos or household of dowry when they were married off
unless a large dowry was available. This meant the loss of land. This was not
a good move because Solon’s system stated that “the highest political, military,
and religious authority went to the men whose families possessed the best and
most land” (Cole). Men could be potentially ruined by women if the woman was
caught with another man and the husband did not kill him or divorce the woman.
If the man stayed with an unfaithful wife, then he would loose his citizenship
and “be permanently excluded from the political community” (Cole). One of the
only benefits of Athenian society may have been that women could not appear in
court as witnesses or even if they were charged with a crime. Their only link
to the judicial system was through a male guardian. However, Perikle’s
Citizenship Law brought women to the forefront by insisting that one could only
be a citizen of Athens if he or she had both an Athenian mother and father.
This brought women into the limelight and men into a domestic context. However,
Perikle was not a women’s rights activist. His new law was meant as a slap in
the face to the Athenian elite whom though it fashionable and profitable to have
foreign wives. It was truly an antiaristocratic move by allowing him to
ostracize individual politicians for ten years. When it comes down to it,
though, Athenian woman truly did have joint role in protecting the city and
ensuring that the prominence of the city continued through continuous
reproduction.

The Spartan people were a
far more open minded class. They realized that “regardless of gender all
Spartiates had an obligation to serve the militaristic end of Sparta.” (Gaughan)
Therefore, this facilitated greater freedom and financial independence in the
women of Sparta. Spartan women were represented by the goddess Artemis whon was
the “God of the hunt and protector of animals, women, girls, youth, and had a
connection with adolescence and childbirth” (Who were the Amazons?). They were
strong women who were “taught to read, write and protect themselves” (The Women
of Sparta). They were trained in athletic events such as the “javelin, discus,
foot races and arranged battles” (Women of Sparta) in the hopes that they would
“strengthen their bodies for healthy childbirth” (Defelice). Marriage was
non-ceremonial to these women. At age eighteen, they were assigned to a husband
that would come and abduct them in the night form their family home. Marriages
in Sparta boiled down to little more that procreation. Men did not live with
their wives in Sparta. In Fact, they could have many wives. Women were not
expected to be held to their fidelity and it was rumored that there was a high
rate of homosexuality. Spartan men were “expected to give their share of
provisions…[and if they failed they would be] expelled from the syssitia (where
they lived in military camps) and would lose some of their citizenship rights”
(Gill). Women in Sparta were even allowed to take another husband “if the first
husband was away too long at war” (The Women of Sparta). All children were kept
by the Spartan people even though they were raised by nurses not their mothers.
In exchange for the Spartan woman’s many freedoms, they were expected to be
warriors and to guard the family property while the husbands were away at war.
This was important since the helots (farmer slaves) and perioeci (craftsmen,
merchants, and artisans) often revolted. Spartan women were even known to start
conflicts. One of the most famous mythical Spartan women, “Menelaus’ wife Helen
caused the Trojan War” (Pomeroy). Spartan women could do anything a man could
do including own land, slaves and lend money. They were often compared to the
Amazon women of the Bronze Age whom were a race of dominant warrior women.
Though, it was speculated that these women many have actually been Persian men
with their beards shaved off. No matter what the case, Spartan women were
definitely allowed greater freedom, mobility, and were respected far more highly
than Athenian women.

After reviewing the
historical data, it is sad to see that two Greek city-states could treat their
women so differently. This leads a lot to the development of women’s rights.
Unfortunately though, even with women’s rights in place, many overseas countries
choose not to use them. The facts are that, in the time period in question,
Spartan women were highly regarded as warriors; whereas, the only difference
between an Athenian woman and a slave was that a slave owner could kill a slave
at anytime. This is a sad but true comparison of how these women were treated.